Saudi Arabia reports 8 more deaths from MERS virus

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said Sunday that eight more people have died after contracting a lethal Middle East virus related to SARS as the kingdom grapples with a rising number of infections.

The ministry reported the deaths in a statement on its website late in the evening. It said it had detected a total of 16 cases of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus over the past 24 hours.

The latest cases bring to 102 the number of people who have died after contracting the disease in Saudi Arabia since September 2012. A total of 339 cases have been recorded to date in the kingdom, which has been the site of the bulk of confirmed infections.

Among the latest dead were a child in the capital, Riyadh, and three people in the western city of Jiddah, which has seen a spike in infections in recent weeks. The ministry also reported confirmed cases in the city of Tabuk, near the border with Jordan.

On Saturday, the ministry reported that a Saudi man died in Riyadh and another in Jiddah.

Egyptian authorities on Saturday said officials there had detected the country's first confirmed infection in a 27-year-old civil engineer who recently returned from Saudi Arabia.

Other Mideast countries that have past reported cases of infection include Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. A small number of cases have been diagnosed in Europe and Asia.

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MERS belongs to the coronavirus family that includes the common cold and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which caused some 800 deaths globally in 2003.

There is no vaccine or cure for MERS, though not all those who contract the virus become ill. It is still unclear how it is transmitted.